One Year Later....

A year ago this week negotiations were underway for our house and a year ago today we were officially under contract. I can hardly believe how quickly the time has flown by! What a year! This time one year ago we had no idea what we were getting into or how much work we were committing to! One year later, we're not nearly done with all the project that I thought we would have completed, but we've learned a lot, worked a lot, and enjoyed our house A LOT! What a blessing it's been to host numerous parties, accomodate lots of over night guests and cook meals for friends and family!

I could make a LONG list of things I still want to do, some easy and cheap, some more involved and a lot more expensive. There is never really a finishing point when it comes to homeownership because as soon as you finish one project you'll always think of another to start. I'll save that list for another post.

It's funny that we have several friends in the Austin area who are in the proccess of house shopping, inspecting, closing and moving right around the time of our "anniversary." It's an exciting time and I can't wait till they are all settled in their new homes and I get to see their nests!

We have a busy weekend coming up: a wedding tonight of a coworker/ ACU friend. Tomorrow I am helping Marika with Jaime's baby shower so I have lots of grocery shopping and food prep to do before 1pm. Then tomorrow night we are going to see The Rocketboys, our friend Mitch's band, play at Stubbs. Never a dull moment!

Back By Popular Demand

I have been getting harassed from all angles over the past few months about my lack of blogging. I'm not sure what happened, but I can't figure out how I used to be so motivated! I'm going to try and slowly get back into the swing of things. I blame part of the lack of blogging to my newest internet addiction, Twitter. If you REALLY want to know what I'm up to, check me out on there, http://twitter.com/katrinalkincaid. Also, for now our home computer is shot, so that is going to limit my posting and especially my pictures. Hopefully we will have that up and running again soon, but for now my internet usage is limited to work, iPhone, and Andrew's work laptop which he brings home a few nights a week.

Happy Easter!

From our family to yours! Hope you had a great Easter! We enjoyed a feast!!

Mmmm! Ham bone!!

I have lots of blogging to catch up on! I will be back soon I promise!

Solicitation For a Good Cause

One of our friends, Alex Schaefer, is spending two years in Kenya working with the Peace Corps. The work he is doing is very worthwhile and making a big impact in the village of Mbumbuni where he is living. One of his biggest projects is working with the the local primary and secondary schools and encouraging the students to dream big, set goals, and problem solve. Because of the poverty in Mbumbuni, the school cannot afford books for the library. The library, literally, is an empty room. Alex has taken it upon himself to raise funds and transport books to Kenya for the school's library.

You can read about all his work on his blog here:

http://www.aosinafrica.blogspot.com

If you feel so inclined, please visit the Wings of the Dawn website and make a donation for Alex's project.

http://www.wingsofthedawn.org/NdulukuLibraryKenya.html

Home Improvements

I'm running out of time tonight so I will try to be brief (yeah right). In between everything else we have found time to do some things around the house. Mainly we did some yard work and completely unpacked and decorated the second guest room. And installed a new toilet. Here it all is:


The second guest room had been a catch all for everything we weren't sure what to do with over the past 6 months. It had furniture but there were boxes and bags and junked stacked up everywhere and the closet was so overflowing you couldn't close the door. Here are a few before pictures.

Ugly brass ceiling fan

Closet o'crap

After! This room inherited some of our Virginia Tech paraphernalia.

The closet where you can actually hang clothes and shut the door!

Less obtrusive ceiling fan

I spent MANY hours going through boxes and boxes of mostly junk that we have been lugging around from house to house. I don't know why I am such a pack rat, but the past week has been great for purging. We also donated tons to Goodwill; lots of clothes, shoes, an old tv, a lamp, and a million old VHS tapes. I threw away things that I probably should have thrown away ten years ago but couldn't let go of. It feels go to have downsized and eliminated clutter as well as free up a lot of closet space.




Here is a short play by play of annoying yard work. The previous owner decided it would be great to put a post in the middle of the yard to hang a wind chime on. WHAT? Anyway, in case there was ever an earth quake or an elephant that wanted to hang from the post, they dug a two foot hole and filed it with cement to support the post.

I really thought Andrew might break his back trying to get this thing out of the ground. I was no help at all, so I just took pictures.

Hole to China

After a trip to Home Depot, we filled it in with some dirt and grass seed. Thanks previous owners for that awesome idea!

We also did a lot of raking and general clean up around the yard, and spread grass seed in a lot of bare spots. I didn't take pictures of this because it was not exciting (as opposed to all the really exciting pictures that I take).

One of my house plants died. We gave up on each other.

So I replaced it with a lovely fern. Hopefully we will have a more fruitful relationship.

And last but certainly not least, we got a new toilet! All this came about because the toilet in our downstairs bathroom was SO AWFUL! It was always having problems flushing and nearly overflowing and I was so fed up with it. After a run in with the toilet today, I just about lost it and decided it was time for the thing to go. Next week we have a bulky trash pick up which is great for us because we have LOTS to get rid of. Bulky pickups are a perfect opportunity to get rid of large items (like a toilet) because what else do you do with an old toilet?? With the bulky pickup looming and more company coming to town in three days, I decided this was the time for a new toilet. If we didn't do it now, we'd have no way to get rid of the old one until the next pickup in 6 months. So did I ever mention that I love the City of Austin?!? A while back I talked about the free toilet program that they have, but today I realized its even better than I thought. Previously, we submitted an application for a free toilet and about a week and a half later received a voucher in the mail. You would then take the voucher to a designated retailer who gives you a free High Efficiency Toilet (HET) for you to install. Today after doing some online investigating, I realized they also have a HET Rebate Program which allows you to pick our your model and retailer. All we had to do is go to Home Depot, pick out a HET model from an approved list, pay for it, and now mail in our reciept and application, and in a few weeks we will get a rebate check for the full amount. This cuts out the wait time for the voucher, although you do still have to wait for the rebate check. Anyway, I figured we could install the new toilet some time in the next few days. I went out for a little while to run some errands and when I came back, Andrew was already half way done with the installation! He is so great! I LOVE THE NEW TOILET! This is another dorky homeowner moment, but seriously, who knew it could be so exciting! Other than the fact that it will save us money on our water bill, and is ultimately free, my favorite part is that it doesn't have the nasty tacky wooden seat! YAY!!!

I did not succeed in being brief. Time to take out the trash and head to bed! Thanks for reading!

SXSW & Friends in Town

For those of you who haven't heard of South by Southwest (SXSW) it is a big film, music and interactive festival that takes place in Austin every year. A lot of what goes on is for people in the industries- premieres, panel discussions, record deals, artist showcases, etc.- but there are some things open to the general public so we took advantage of many of the free events. Along with SXSW came some out of town visitors, so we've had some company at the house over the past week and a half.

First, Dan came to town for the film portion of the festival. Dan writes for an awesome website called Pajiba so he was at SXSW with press credentials and got to see and do some pretty awesome things. Most notibly, he got to meet and interview Seth Rogen who, strangely enough, is his doppleganger (or Dan is his).


They first came face to face on the red carpet at the premiere of "Observe and Report," Rogen's new film that is about to come out. You can read about it here.

Later he got a one on one interview and took a real picture together. I'm still trying to get over my jealousy. And here is a shot of Dan with someone slightly less famous, who apparently likes to make weird faces.







And since we were out on St. Patty's day, I felt compelled to take a picture of the green lights strung across the streets of downtown.


This past Thurdsay evening, we headed downtown to Auditorium Shores, a big park in Austin where there was a free concert series going on for 3 nights as a part of SXSW. We saw Cold War Kids play and a little bit of M. Ward's show. Here are a few shots from that.


Friday night we went to see The Rockeyboys play a free show at a Wine Bar on S. Congress. One of our friends, Mitch Holt, is in the band and we try to see them play as often as we can. We had a great time hanging out with Mitch and his girlfriend Lindy before the show, and then the four of us went to dinner at Guero's after the show, since it was right next door. I've been trying to eat at Guero's since we moved to Austin a year and a half ago, but have always been thwarted somehow. It was a great meal and I definitely would like to go back. The highlight of the night for Andrew by far, was that this trendy, upscale wine bar also served Schlitz in a fancy glass. What more could you ask for?



Saturday night's activity was- wait, you guessed it- another free concert. Explosions in the Sky played at Auditorium Shores, the very last act of the SXSW festival. Aubrey, who is also a bridesmaid in Lindsey's upcoming wedding, arrived in Austin just in time to enjoy the show. Aubrey, Lindsey, Marika and I hung out downtown and had a fun little girls evening. At the end of the show there was an awesome fireworks display (get it, explosions in the sky...) that lasterd forever. It was longer and more elaborate than any Fourth of July display that I had ever seen. Also, I had some old, old family friends come to town so their kids could go to the Explosions in the Sky concert so we had a house full of Cukrowskis and friends. Ken and Karen Cukrowski have known me since I was three, and I have known their girls since they were born, so it is crazy to see them as sophomores and juniors in high school with boyfriends. Ken didn't come for the whirlwind trip from Abilene, but Karen came with Katie and Krista and both their boyfriends. It was fun to hang out with all of them even though the trip was short. I was dumb and didn't snap and pictures while they were here :( I guess there are plenty of other pictures for you to look at :)

Catching Up

I haven't had a good long post in a while, but honestly, we have been busy and I haven't had much time. This week will be even busier coming up, but it's going to lots of fun. Lindsey's wedding is THIS FRIDAY, and if you haven't been keeping up with my blog over the last several months, I am the "MOH" along with her sister. I'm about to go into full on wedding mode this week so don't expect any posts after this for the rest of the week. I'm sure I will have lots of pictures and news from the wedding to blog about afterwards.

I'm going to do a couple of posts here in the next few minutes just to divide everything up. Read away!